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Vullaby

Welcome to the Extreme Pokemon Makeovers Contest! Created by Hipmonlee, this contest intends to redesign a pokemon line which we feel have a great concept, but is executed poorly in its appearance and design. This round features a pokemon which many people hate for its needless extravagant patterns, its sluggish appearance, and the fact that it breaks away from the badass fire-starter tradition. Sure, Typhlosion wasn't that badass, but at least it didn't have a poor design, unlike...

Round TWO:Redesign the Tepig line.

Yep, this Pokemon line is arguably GameFreak's worst invention yet, in terms of starter-pokemon lines. Of course, it is hard to come up with great fire-type pokemon designs. Sure, there have been some excellent ones in the past, such as Charizard or Magmortar, but when you look at Pokemon such as Heatmor and Slugma, it kinda balances things out. Tepig is a good design; it's simple, clean, and overall cute. However, as we move further along the evolution chain, things start to look bleak. Pignite's design is poor; it looks more like an obese rabbit than a pig. Its stubby arms doesn't make sense when giving it the Fighting-type, coupled with it's overweight appearance. Still, it could be worse, it could be Emboar, who is plagued by Pignite's problems, but then introduces needless and confusing patterns.

The main reason fire-types are so hard to design is the overall lack of more sources of fire. Magma and lava, burning fire, and the colour red are the only three features we see in almost every Fire-type pokemon. Flames stuck on Pokemon are becoming increasingly tacky, whilst Magma and Lava has already been done in almost every way. I see colouring the Pokemon red as a cheap way to make it fire-type, unless it has another fire-type attribute included. (Look at Vulpix.)

So your job is to redesign the line. Of course, you must keep to the Tepig line's overall basic concept: A pig/boar pokemon, and a fire/fighting type. After that, be creative and come up with good ideas! Let's set up some ground rules:

Design matters as well as art! Just because you're not an excellent artist doesn't mean you shouldn't participate! If your design is great, and you prove that you're inventive, then that will be noted by the judges.

Moderator

It's really fucking difficult to make a quadruped fighting pokemon that looks like one, apparently.

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Indeed. Every single pure and primary Fighting type, save for Mankey and Primeape, are humanoid bipedals, and most of the rest are too. In fact, among all Fighting Pokémon, only the Swords of Justice (Keldeo included) are not bipedal.

Hmm, since most people dislike the choice of the Tepig line (which is weird, because it was the opposite on #pokemon and many people agreed that Pignite and Emboar's design were poor on #smeargle), I'm pondering whether a new change of pokemon line should take place. (Sorry elcheeso). With that the most probable solution, to make at least most of the community in agreement with the pokemon choice, can I have everybody's idea on which pokemon should be chosen? I'll make a poll to decide which pokemon is chosen, from the suggestions...suggested.

Moderator

i hope you don't feel like we've just stomped all over the thread either -- i think polling #pokemon and #smeargle to start is a fine idea, i guess emboar is just one of those lines that conflicts people

i'm not a big hydreigon fan either, pocket, but beware nj; she will stomp you

i still say the torchic line is a sore disappointment, but i know people at least like blaziken from it, even if the others are weak

strangely, i really loved oshawott and picked him as my starter in bw, but i feel like that line could have been done better too

ps i'm reading through r1 of this and rethinking my decision to turn down judging it again... it was a lot of fun!!

Moderator

I don't understand how people can't love torchic and combusken... I really don't. Cyndaquil's line always seemed like the weakest family in terms of fire starters to me. But yeah. I think the problem is that there's no real definition for what constitutes bad design. It's all pretty subjective atm and is probably just more of a case of "what don't you like".

I believe an obvious choice (by constant "demand" from Gen V haters) would be the Trubbish line, though I'm sure equally many will disagree
...although personally I really look forward to remaking Chikorita line as kickass forest dinos
or the Serperior line as Grass/Dragon (the Smog!)
But apparently we aren't supposed to toy with the typing?

My head cannot grasp the complaints about Hydreigon it's exploding
And I see great potential in Smogon artists to create wackier fire/fighting chickens, but imo Blaziken's cool enough to settle.

On second thought, I believe our artists will be able to make a lot out of the Vullaby line. That design I cannot live with :(

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! Actually, the decision on which Pokemon to pick for this thread was cut down to three; Tepig, Klink, and Timburr. Of course, these are all Gen V pokemon, so I'm gonna include pokemon in the poll from different gens as well. I'm going to reject Mr.Mime straight away because there is no place in Pokemon for a mime pokemon, and that constitutes under "poor concept" as well as poor design.

Err, I'll have 6 pokemon in the final poll. Yeah. I'll make the poll at around 4:30 tomorrow.

King of Irrelevancy

i don't think you should be limiting this to redesigning whole lines, for instance, i find torchic, combusken, and trubbish all fine looking pokemon, but it's blaziken and garbador who let the whole evolution line down. it might be an idea to use an existing pokemon as a starting point and see what their evolution should have ideally looked like.

i don't think you should be limiting this to redesigning whole lines, for instance, i find torchic, combusken, and trubbish all fine looking pokemon, but it's blaziken and garbador who let the whole evolution line down. it might be an idea to use an existing pokemon as a starting point and see what their evolution should have ideally looked like.

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Hmm... so say something like, Geodude-Graveler-Golem, where Golem is the Pokemon we're redesigning? That might work. I'm not going to go straight for this though; I'll include the suggestion in the poll and see if the Community decides on this. Of course, that will mean another poll to decide what the pokemon in question will be, if your suggestion is chosen.